Trump vows to “eliminate the Jew-haters” if he is re-elected during event commemorating the October 7 attacks

CNN
—

Former President Donald Trump said Monday he would “eliminate the Jew-haters” if re-elected, speaking at an event commemorating the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel.

“I will defend our American Jewish population. I will protect your communities, your schools, your places of worship and your values. We will remove the jihadist sympathizers and Jew-haters. “We will eliminate the Jew-haters who do nothing to help our country but only want to destroy our country,” he said during the event at his golf course in Doral, Florida.

The former president did not provide specific details about who he considered “Jew-haters.” The remarks came as Trump marked the anniversary of the terrorist attacks, saying Oct. 7 was the “deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”

Trump claimed that “anti-Jewish hatred” exists “in the ranks of the Democratic Party.” Trump has repeatedly claimed that Jewish Democrats should “get their heads examined,” alluding to the anti-Semitic narrative that Jewish Americans have dual loyalties to Israel and the United States.

“Anti-Jewish hatred has returned even here in America, in our streets, our media and our college campuses, and especially in the ranks of the Democratic Party, not the Republican Party. I’m telling you it doesn’t belong in the Republican Party,” the former president added.

One of the promises in the preamble to the GOP platform adopted at the Republican National Convention in July is to “deport pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again.”

During protests on college campuses across the country earlier this year, the former president repeatedly criticized the protesters and the Biden administration’s response. In April he claimed without evidence that many of them were “paid” and “professional” agitators.

At the October 7 commemoration, Trump said: “The bond between the United States and Israel is strong and enduring… when I am President of the United States, it will once again be stronger and closer than ever before.” We have to win this election. If we don’t win this election, it will have huge consequences for everything.”

The former president said at an event last month that he was “not treated appropriately by voters who happen to be Jewish” in the 2020 election and said Jewish voters would bear some responsibility if he were to lose this year, during At the same time he pointed out his record against Israel.

Trump has long played on anti-Semitic tropes and attacked Jewish Americans who he says don’t support him enough. During his first presidential campaign, he gave a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition that was full of anti-Semitic stereotypes, and shortly after leaving office in 2021, he told reporters that Jewish Americans had turned their backs on Israel. In an interview in March, Trump said that every Jewish person who votes for Democrats “hates their religion” and hates “everything about Israel.”